Crossroads
by Ayrith
Summary: [InuSan] Not everybody gets a second chance.


**Crossroads**

**Author's Note: **Inspired by **LightNinja. **This was supposed to be the challenge she sent me, but I got carried away in the angst and ended up completely missing one of the guidelines. So not only does she take credit for this little piece, but also the next IY/Sa I will be doing. She's a good author too. Go read her stuff. Oh, and also, lots and lots of credit goes to **Morbidity, **who beta-ed this and made me very happy. She is very encouraging, and an amazing author, so _go read her stuff too._

Also, if you see any grammar or punctuation mistakes, please tell me. **Morbidity **did a superb job, but I might have made mistakes while doing revisions. Thank you.

**Disclaimer: **Nope

**Note: **Canon. InuyashaSango. _Not everybody gets a second chance._

* * *

_.  
_

* * *

_We were so alike then._

We still are now.

_Yes. But back then, we were different. We liked to hope. Believe._

We don't anymore.

_No, we don't. Because we also liked to remember when we should have forgotten._

We liked to pretend.

…_yes_.

…we still do, don't we?

**_Yes_**.

* * *

I sit beside him, resting against his strong, warm body, wondering why things played out the way they did. I am thinking selfish thoughts, but I know Inuyasha is too, and some how that makes my actions seem not that horrible. Not because he is still a hanyou, not because my brother's blood drenches his claws, not because he couldn't save Kagome.

Because he's all I have left, and in comparison to me, he's a saint.

I wonder, sometimes, why he still stays. I wonder, sometimes, why _I _still stay.

…perhaps it is better not knowing.

"Inuyasha." I say softly. My breath trickles across his shoulder and I feel him tremble—_uncertain—_beneath my embrace. If I look close enough, breath deeply enough, I can taste his _hesitance_, see his _fear_. And as tangled against him as I am, most of all, I can feel his _longing_.

For who, I am not sure. For who, I'm uncertain that I _want_ to know.

All I want to think about and remember is the part of me that died in a string of beads. That brought me back to life for a moment, only to crush me when he left.

My fingers skitter across Inuyasha's tan skin, stained red by the firelight. Across his face, down his neck, tracing the invisible patterns in his haori. When he whimpers, crushes his mouth against my own, I hold him tight.

_Kagome, _I know he's thinking.

I kiss him harder.

Miroku, oh Miroku, what have you done to me?

* * *

Sometimes, if I look too closely in the mirror, I see Miroku. I see my own desperate attempts to bring him back into my life; I see the traces he left in me, and the parts of him I'm unwilling to let go of. Sometimes, if I glance casually at my reflection, I see a string of broken beads around my wrist, cursing me to take up the life that he left off.

Inuyasha is not the only one with scars. He has his rosary beads, and I have mine.

I wonder where my life went.

* * *

"What are you doing?"

Once upon a time, Inuyasha could travel through time.

"Trying to understand all this."

Once upon a time, Inuyasha had a reason to travel through time.

"…oh."

But once upon a time, Inuyasha lost that reason.

Her ghost lingers still, here and there, in both him and in me.

He's sitting casually against the hut wall, reading through one of Kagome's old books. It's been handled and opened and read in so much that the pages are falling out, and the binding is frayed. On the cover, in faded letters, I can read the word "GEOMETRY".

Kagome used to hate the subject. Maybe that's why Inuyasha tries to understand it.

"I hate this," he growls suddenly, closing the book with a snap. "It's worthless, and I don't understand how it can ever be used in real life."

_Then why are you reading it? _I want to ask, but I know better then that. It's part of his little act, his attempt in taking what he lost and making it part of himself.

I know all about that. He's helped me do the exact same thing.

"You'll see some day." I say dutifully, like a wife to a husband, or even a parent to a child. "It'll be of use one day."

He snorts. "Whatever."

I turn away to begin preparation of dinner. I pretend, dutifully, that I don't see him carefully collect all the papers that fell out of the book, and put them neatly in a large yellow bag. I pretend like I don't see his pained look.

He can't go back through the well. He lost both his reason to travel and the power to go.

His broken string of beads hangs lifelessly around his neck.

* * *

I am the woman of a thousand masks.

One for each life that I have taken.

And I bear this burden not out of guilt.

But out of sorrow.

When I look in the mirror, sometimes I see Naraku. I see all that I despise, all that I hate, but I see memories and people I will never forget. Sometimes, I remember only some of it: the beginnings of the battle, the clash of blade against flesh, the soaring triumph amidst a choking sorrow.

Sometimes, I remember all of it.

How I was manipulated through Naraku's trickery and influence, fought against my only allies and betrayed them all once again. How the shard pulsing in my back only heightened my blood lust. How horrified Miroku's face was, when I laughed cruelly amidst the black winds and smiled in the wake of his crater. How I cried the moment after, tried fighting Naraku's control and _failed._

And later, not even Naraku's death could cure the agony that burned red on my blade.

"Inuyasha," I call softly. When he opens his eyes, face highlighted by moonlight, I see both a child and a man lying next to me, a person lost to his own anger, his forgiveness, and his longing.

And I know in that moment, I am wearing another mask, a more intimate face, another forsaken life.

"I love you." He murmurs.

"Do you really?" I try not to sound too pained.

He pulls me closer. "Yes."

Amidst my withheld tears, I understand.

He stays, because he no longer has the choice to forget.

Perhaps, in fate's twisted way, he _does _love me, as I love him in my own twisted way. He doesn't blame me for their deaths and he won't abandon me, no matter how undeserving I am of his loyalty and forgiveness.

But there is always that distant memory, that one innocent mask that I shall always bear.

For as I sometimes see Naraku_—_and _Miroku—_when I look at my reflection, sometimes, when he looks at me…

He sees Kagome.

* * *

We stood at a crossroads, him and I, that fateful day. Right before everything went wrong, before my world ceased to exist, before Inuyasha lost everything, we had the chance to choose.

What came first, the past that lay hauntingly behind us, or the future that stood waiting beside us?

We unwittingly chose the past.

_Kohaku…_

_Kikyou… _

Miroku died trying to save Inuyasha from an obvious trap; his rosary beads broke by my hand.

Kagome died trying to save me from myself. She destroyed the fake shard that was imbedded in my back by Kohaku, just as my blade became slick with her blood.

Inuyasha killed Kohaku.

Kikyou died as Kagome took her last breath.

Together, Inuyasha and I killed Naraku.

We lost everything.

* * *

I had always thought, foolishly, that I would have a second chance.

I was wrong.

I'm sorry Miroku.

There will be no more crossroads.

All I can do now, is walk the path I chose.

* * *

Sango?

_Yes Inuyasha?_

I don't blame you for what happened.

…_you should._

Kagome wouldn't have blamed you.

_I know._

* * *

…We're going to be all right, Sango.

…_I hope so._

…we don't hope anymore.

_Kagome would have wanted us to._

…I know.

* * *

Where do we begin?

_Here._


End file.
